Taking AIM at asteroids, with CubeSats

Beginning its preliminary Phase-A/B design work next month, ESA’s AIM spacecraft will be humanity’s first mission to a binary system – the paired Didymos asteroids, which come a comparatively close 11 million km to Earth in 2022. The 800 m-diameter main body is orbited by a 170 m moon.

AIM will perform high-resolution visual, thermal and radar mapping of the moon. It will also put down a lander – ESA’s first touchdown on a small body since Rosetta’s Philae landed on a comet last November.

The chance to put forward CubeSats is being organised as a SysNova competition, an initiative by ESA’s General Studies Programme – which is running the AIM project – to compare innovative solutions to space mission challenges.